Monday, March 17, 2008

I'll Tell Ya What The Effect Is, It's Pissing Me Off!

Last season, a popular ticket-scalping Web Site partnered with Major League Baseball. In other words, MLB is saying it is illegal to resell your tickets, but on behalf of the people who buy them from you when you do, please choose this particular place to buy the illegal goods.

This season, the Red Sox have become the only team to opt out of that partnership, choosing a local ticket-scalping agency to be their "official" secondary marketplace. It's an "advertising only" deal, which is better than being actual partners--but not much. So this agency will get its ad up on a billboard at Fenway every game.

That's right, the Red Sox, who have the right to refuse your ticket order for any reason, including reselling them for more than 2% higher than face value (per Mass. law), are promoting and encouraging an agency whose entire concept breaks that same rule.

The team makes it very clear during their ticket lotteries and sales, and on the back of the ticket itself, that it is illegal to scalp your tickets. They can ban you from ever ordering from them should they "catch" you doing it. But they figure (along with all of MLB) that as long as it's going on, they might as well get some of the money back.

Talk about weak.

"Oh, no, it's okay, keep raping grandma on the side of the road, just, can you put this shirt on with my company logo on it so passing motorists will see it and I can make some money to cover her medical bills? Cool. Same place tomorrow?"

Grow a spine, MLB. If people are taking advantage of you and all the fans, make them stop. Remember when the mobsters came to Calogero's dad and offered him a job? He respectfully told them to fuck off. And, like Lance in a completely different film, that's what you should be telling these assholes, right now.

When you're sitting in the Virtual Waiting Room, who do you think is getting all the tickets? A huge percentage of those people are buying tickets strictly to re-sell them for way more than they spent because they know they can. Another chunk is made up of the agencies themselves, or people who work for them. Let's stop supporting these places so the tickets can go from the team to the fans. It's bad enough a 12-dollar upper bleacher ticket costs about 25 dollars with all the fees the team adds on, let alone the hundred it can cost from a scalper.

Recently, a ticket order I placed with the Red Sox was canceled for a ridiculous technical reason. It's a long story which I will tell you once I hear back from the team. I wrote a letter (the paper kind) to the head of ticketing. It kills me that they took back some tickets that I--a real fan who bought tickets so my friends and family would get to see a game--purchased, while people who buy tickets for the sole purpose of illegally re-selling them to fans for a profit are not only allowed to do this, but are encouraged to.

The other side of this argument says, "It's my right to sell stuff for whatever price someone's willing to pay." I say, Why does someone like that have the stuff to begin with? The tickets belong to the team. They're putting the product on the field, and allowing you to have a chance to see it for the price they choose. After that, you should either have to go to the game, eat the tickets, or give them to someone else for no more than you paid originally. If that law were enforced, people who just buy so they can sell for a profit would have no interest in buying in the first place. You get rid of that crowd (including these "licensed agencies") and there are plenty of tickets to go around for the actual fans. And I don't mean to use the term "fan" in a high and mighty way. I just say "fan" meaning "person who wants to attend the game" as opposed to "person who wants to get greedy mitts on ticket so they can sell for 15 times face value."

It's so funny how so many places turn the other way on this whole "law" thing. Go to craigslist and look at their "disclaimer" in the "tickets" section. They say "please don't sell for above face value." (I can just see them in court: "We said please!") Then look at every single posting in the section. People blatantly list tickets at well above what they're worth. Does craigslist immediately delete the ad? Never. But when I do a sarcastic post there mocking the greedy bastards who feel vindicated selling a 30 dollar seat for 300 dollars because "that's what people are getting elsewhere," it's deleted. Go figure.

Please, if you have tickets and can't go to a game, think about the following options. 1. Your friends! Surely you have friends who like the same team as you. I'm guessing they probably complain all the time about how they "can't get tickets," too. Give 'em to them. Charge them face value plus what you paid in fees. They will appreciate it. And you'll feel way better about yourself than you will with a few extra bucks that won't make much of a difference in your life ten years from now. 2. Donate them to charity. 3. Give them to the first sickly-looking child you see. And that's about all we can do. The rest is up to the teams to stop pandering to the scalpers.

Amen, Amen, AMEN!!!This is one of my biggest pet peeves. The fact that scalping is illegal, ostensibly because it is unfair to the common fan, and unhealthy for the game. Yet there are people and sites all over the landscape who do it right out in the open, and nobody does a thing.Now MLB wants to not only turn a blind eye, but participate in it and profit?Fuck 'em